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A Punter’s Perspective 16 — The Beez: Portrait of a band at the end of a very long road

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The Beez at the (Australian) National Multicultural Festival
The Beez at the (Australian) National Multicultural Festival, February 2009

A Punter’s Perspective

Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage

#16 The Beez: Portrait of a band at the end of a very long road
First published in Trad and Now magazine, May 2009

‘Is there any point going on with this? I mean, should we just unplug and go acoustic?’

It was late December 2008, one of the first gigs for The Beez from Berlin at the start of an epic four-month tour. Fresh off the plane (and without their usual all-terrain sound man Georg for the first few gigs), things were not going well.

The speaker, Rob Rayner, originally from Sydney but a long-term resident of Berlin, was being polite and patient and professional, but the strain was beginning to show as Julischka’s acoustic bass seemed determined to stay unplugged. The audience was urged to move up front and cluster in the front rows.

Guitarist Peter D’Elia made some gag to help defuse the situation which got no response from the audience, except this from yours truly. ‘Try telling that joke again acoustically’.

‘Hey, I know you!’ D’Elia said, pointing into the second row.

And so was rekindled a friendship that left off in Cobargo in 2007.

This was the start point of the mammoth undertaking that saw The Beez travel to just about every point on the Australian compass, from Darwin to Hobart, from Byron Bay to Perth and many, many points in between. Continue reading →

A Punter’s Perspective 04 — National Folk Festival 2007

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IMG00924-20100401-1644A Punter’s Perspective
Random observations on the weird world of folk from the side of the stage

#4 National Folk Festival 2007
First published in Trad and Now magazine, June 2007

 

By Bill Quinn

The 2007 National Folk Festival is by now but a handful of dim, fuzzy, yet pleasant memories on the rear horizon. Before the festivals themes of Western Australia, water and the Middle East fade completely away, here are a few observations on some of the talent and goings on in Canberra over April.

Lessons learnt from the Easter weekend at EPIC: the Canberra Contra Club did not receive arms (or any other body parts) from the US Government in the mid-1980s. The Lawnmowers are not available for freelance landscaping jobs. Madviolet did not take their name from an aggressive (and since discontinued) Dulux paint chart. But it is true: the Jinju Wishu Academy were approached for next year’s Tamworth Country Music Festival – until Academy members quietly explained they are in fact ‘lion dancers’.

The Western Australians were in town in greater numbers than usual, and hopefully those present took the time to meet, greet and hear from a bunch of singers, songwriters and musicians that might not ordinarily make it to the east.

Simon Fox (from WA via Vancouver) treated audiences to a stack of his original tunes, including one that nearly got him evicted from his apartment during the creative process. He’d practised the bluegrass licks so many times that his neighbour above was going quite spare.

Simon claimed it was revenge for his having to listen to his country and western neighbour incessantly banging his foot on his floor (Simon’s ceiling) in time to his own brand of music. The audience burst into applause at the end of Simon’s tune: ‘Yeah, you like it, but you didn’t have to listen to it for hours in a row!’ Continue reading →